Chapter 383: A Bizarre Couple

Pearl Harbor's opening week box office had just come out. Duke and Warner Brothers received the detailed data immediately, and The Lord of the Rings Studio held a special meeting to discuss their countermeasures.

"Although Pearl Harbor releases a weekend apart from our film, the competition still exists."

In the conference room, Duke stood at his seat and paced a few steps. "Shrek, which premiered the weekend before ours, is a DreamWorks Animation production. Under normal circumstances, a major production rarely loses screens in its second weekend..."

"Exactly," Charles Roven nodded. "As long as the film isn't complete garbage, a major production's theater count won't see a significant drop over its first two weekends."

"It's an animated feature, so its audience is clearly distinct from ours."

Crossing one arm over his chest and resting his chin in his hand, Duke frowned. "The North American Theater Alliance promised we wouldn't drop below 3,600 theaters, but I want more!"

"That's going to be difficult, Duke." Doug Walter rubbed his temples. "Don't forget, this is the Summer Season."

With so many blockbusters fighting over the lucrative meat of theater allocations, even Warner Brothers couldn't snatch up too large a piece.

"The Fellowship of the Ring is 165 minutes long."

Pulling out a chair, Duke sat down. "Given the same number of theaters and the same screen share, we're definitely going to have fewer daily showings..."

A two-hour film and a two-and-a-half-hour film would naturally squeeze a different number of showings into the same auditorium each day. That difference in showtimes translated directly into a gap in box office returns.

Doug Walter certainly understood this. The success of The Fellowship of the Ring and the Thanksgiving release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone would directly determine whether he could compete to be the next CEO of Warner Brothers next year!

"What are your thoughts, Duke?" he asked.

"Have you noticed the audience word-of-mouth for Pearl Harbor?" Duke's gaze turned toward Doug Walter. "Over its three-day opening weekend, this war film only hit a 69 percent audience approval rating. Its IMDB score is 6.7, and needless to say, the media is basically delivering a chorus of curses..."

In truth, because the release dates for these films were staggered, neither Warner Brothers nor Walt Disney had made any major moves.

However, since it was the Summer Season, competition was inevitable. Besides, they didn't actually need to do much.

Charles Roven picked up on Duke's point. "If Pearl Harbor takes too steep of a box office dive over the next week or so, the theaters will definitely scale back its screenings."

"And those freed-up theaters..." Doug Walter's eyes glinted sharply. "We can snatch the majority of them for ourselves."

Duke stood up again, resting both hands on the conference table as he emphasized, "Doug, our promotion will remain focused on The Fellowship of the Ring. Pearl Harbor's audience word-of-mouth is terrible enough on its own. We don't need to do much, just give it a little push on the internet..."

"I understand." Doug Walter nodded, turning his gaze toward Penny Kalis. "It seems we'll be collaborating once more."

Paid online shills weren't some brilliant, mysterious existence. The people sitting in the upper echelons of major Hollywood studios weren't fools. Moreover, with the massive hype generated by The Matrix and The Blair Witch Project, it didn't take much analysis to figure out the mechanisms of online marketing.

Duke had never expected to keep paid online shills a secret either; that would be vastly underestimating the intelligence of Hollywood and corporate America.

The distribution and promotion departments of almost every major Hollywood studio had already established specialized online marketing divisions.

As the birthplace of the internet, North America possessed a highly developed web infrastructure that was deeply penetrating every corner of work and daily life in the country, bringing immense influence along with it.

Neither Penny Kalis nor Warner Brothers would focus their main efforts on attacking Pearl Harbor. They would simply piggyback on the current wave of critical public opinion, letting their paid online shills pull a few strings online.

The opening week box office for Pearl Harbor allowed Michael Ovitz to breathe a sigh of relief. An opening weekend pull of nearly 60 million dollars was his best weekend result yet since rolling out his package-deal service.

Although weekday numbers showed a downward trend, the decline remained within a controllable range. The 10.56 million and 9.1 million dollars raked in on Monday and Tuesday had already pushed Pearl Harbor's North American box office up to the 100 million dollar threshold. Barring any surprises, by the time the film had been out for a full week, its North American gross would easily break the 100 million dollar mark!

What kind of achievement was this? Even The Matrix was only on this level! And Pearl Harbor also enjoyed the advantage of its age rating, so its subsequent box office trend ought to be even stronger.

The office door was suddenly pushed open. Martin Bob barged right in and, without waiting for Ovitz to ask, said hurriedly, "Michael, the situation doesn't look good. Negative news about Pearl Harbor is steadily increasing online. Right now..."

"Is it Rotten Tomatoes?" Michael Ovitz waved a hand dismissively. "That so-called freshness rating references film critics' reviews. Just ignore them."

He was no fool. From the early nineties to the present, he had seen clearly enough that while film critics still had some influence over the box office of Summer Season films, it was infinitely approaching zero. The eighties generation was now making up the main body of moviegoers—would these people care about the voices of film critics?

"No..." Martin Bob was clearly anxious. "You'd better see for yourself."

Following his prompt, Michael Ovitz opened several widely influential film websites in succession.

The IMDB score had dropped from 6.7 to a failing 5.9...

The emaScore rating was only 5.8...

Compared to these scores, the negative reviews flooding the internet were even more glaring, constantly reminding the online audience just how terrible Pearl Harbor truly was!

"They actually turned a war movie into a romance! Romance my ass—it's just a boring, melodramatic love triangle!"

"Whenever Michael Bay tries to play around with romance, God laughs, and the movie turns to shit!"

"I strongly recommend choosing an aisle seat, because you will absolutely need to hit the bathroom at least three times!"

After scrolling through the comment sections of several major movie websites, Ovitz saw that it wasn't as if Pearl Harbor had zero positive reviews; they were simply drowned out by a surging tsunami of malicious critiques.

"The movie is totally uninspiring. While watching it, you'll definitely find yourself screaming, 'Boring, boring, boring!'"

"All three leads lack any highlights. Ben Affleck is used to playing arrogant, bombastic roles, which probably isn't far off from his actual personality; Josh Hartnett looks a bit like a young Richard Gere, possessing quite a bit of star quality but no discernible acting talent; British actress Kate Beckinsale seems to be imitating Nicole Kidman, and the most she'll get out of this film is a recognizable face."

"This is a film forcibly dragged out to three hours to show how the Japanese sneak attack on December 7, 1941, served as nothing more than a foil for an American-style love triangle. It's deeply disappointing. Michael Bay is just Michael Bay; he'll never be Duke Rosenberg. I'll just keep looking forward to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring!"

Seeing this, the corners of Michael Ovitz's mouth began to twitch. These were clearly threads discussing Pearl Harbor. Why had the topic derailed onto The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring?

"I'm waiting for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring to heal the trauma caused by Pearl Harbor!"

"What the hell is Pearl Harbor even supposed to be? Did Michael Bay think that by forcibly dragging in a melodramatic love triangle, he could compare to Duke? You should just go watch The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and properly learn how a movie is supposed to be made!"

"I'm not going to see Pearl Harbor. I'd rather save my pocket money for a ticket to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring."

"Give up on Pearl Harbor, wait for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring!"

"Waiting +1!"

"Waiting for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring..."

Michael Ovitz took a deep breath, reined in his emotions, and shut off his computer. He turned to Martin Bob. "Have our public relations department contact Disney immediately. Launch crisis PR right now!"

His tone was extremely serious, showing exactly how much weight he attached to this matter. Thanks to the massive success of The Blair Witch Project, Ovitz had witnessed the terrifying power of the internet firsthand; it could catapult a film to fame, and it could also suppress one.

However, he had already fallen to a disadvantage because Pearl Harbor was indeed truly terrible. The push from the paid online shills was completely catering to the audience's own perceptions. Suppressing public opinion against the wind was vastly more difficult than riding it.

Furthermore, what Duke held in his hands was an army of paid online shills that had been established for years and possessed countless campaigns' worth of experience in online marketing!

Of course, the premise for all of this was built on the fact that Pearl Harbor's quality truly didn't pass muster.

Perhaps the early promotion and massive investment in Pearl Harbor could attract audiences into the theaters, but once negative word-of-mouth began to ferment and spread, its box office would suddenly take a steep dive, just like every other big-budget flop that opened high and fell fast.

What Duke and his people were doing was merely accelerating this process.

Thus, on Wednesday, the single-day box office for Pearl Harbor shrank to 4.63 million dollars, and it continued to drop on Thursday, raking in a mere 4.05 million dollars...

Although Thursday hadn't even ended yet, Michael Ovitz's dream of seeing the film's seven-day box office cross 100 million dollars had thoroughly turned into a pipe dream!

This was only the beginning. Going into its second weekend, with DreamWorks Animation Studio's masterpiece Shrek in theaters, Pearl Harbor still took a hit despite their different target audiences. Compounded by the negative reviews blanketing the internet and the terrible word-of-mouth passed from person to person, the film's second-weekend box office took a direct 60 percent dive, grossing only 23.62 million dollars.

Without any suspense, Shrek trampled over Pearl Harbor with 42.34 million dollars, easily bagging the weekly box office championship.

Although Pearl Harbor's box office had broken the 100 million dollar mark, its severe dive caused various forecasting agencies to continually lower their expectations for its final gross. The vast majority of agencies believed it was impossible for the film's North American box office to reach the 250 million dollars expected by Artists Management Company and Touchstone Pictures; even surpassing 200 million dollars would be extremely, extremely difficult.

"Two hundred million dollars?"

Sitting in his office, Eno Martin twirled a formal invitation in his hands and said to Tom Hanks, "If Pearl Harbor manages to hit 150 million dollars in North America, Michael Ovitz should be celebrating a victory!"

His tone slowly grew heavier. "What they have to face next isn't an animated feature with a different audience demographic, but a Duke Rosenberg film!"